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21 comments on “Spin-busting: Probationary periods”

Love the wording “probationary period’ kind of makes all new workers sound like criminals… same old same old, and Keys speech headline ‘decade of missed opportunities’ must be referring to the 1990s government induced recession.

Yes, but because there is no difference between a probationary and non-probationary period, it is utterly meaningless.

It’s like having two mammals of the family Myrmecophagidae, having long, tapered snouts, extensile tongues, and powerful front claws who feed chiefly on ants and termites and calling one an ant eater and the other a Robinsod.

I think the major issue with the current process is the lack of a definition of a fair process. The current legislation is written and designed for big organisations. It does not help SME’s at all and is (unintentionally) cramping them in to ‘safe’ yet unproductive hiring decisions. This does not help growth and just keeps embracing mediocrity.

The key line from the department of Labour website that enables all dismissals to be interpreted as a PG is:

‘The employer should investigate any allegations of misconduct thoroughly and without prejudice’

By definition an SME employer can never enter in to a fair process as the very act of entering this process means they are already prejudiced. Unless, the employer is a part of a big organisation and someone who is not involved with the day to day interaction of the employee in question can run the process can they enter the process without prejudice.

The other kicker is:
‘Employees who feel they have been treated unfairly at work or when they have been dismissed, made redundant or discriminated against’

What employee that is dismissed ever feels that they have been treated fairly? Ok, there are some exceptions, my opinion is that the majority would not.

This policy needs to have a few checks in place to protect against employers who will abuse it. However as it is aimed at companies that employ less than 20 employees, I think it is feasible and aimed at the right demographic.

Let’s be honest, a newspaper is not written at an academic level as they expect the average kiwi to be reading it. The same thing is applied here, a crude rule (that needs to go through the select committee in my eyes to get the appropriate checks in place) aimed for the average NZ Business owner, not the corporates. NZ is approx 90% SME’s, the legislation needs to reflect that.

If I read it right, it basically seems to be saying that you can have a probationery period but it means nothing. Anyone else got a better understanding?

Personally I approve of a sensible scheme but a) I don’t think this is it, b) I’d much rather it went through the process properly. I don’t want the National Party to pick up the worst habits of the Labour Party!

“let’s be honest, a newspaper is written by reprinting NP press releases ”

generally speaking media are left of centre as that is more populist and results in more sales of their media and thus the ability to advertise – media are sadly a medium to sell advertisements and old school journalism is dead.

But it’s a conspiracy theory – I’m new to blogs and look at the left and the right and both are full of b****ks conspiracy theories that anyone with more than 2 neurons realises are unreal – but guys, the left wingers win the stupid consiporacy race (not by a lot)

Unless this bill is going to suddenly elicit a mass hiring splurge (unlikely in the current environment) and certainly not usually the case prior to XMAS – I can’t see what the reason is for the hurry apart from hurrying for the pure sake of it and that tends to be a recipe for poorly drafted law (it certainly has been the case in the past).

pk: Welcome aboard. I spend a lot of time arguing against both the loony right who claim the media are all run by pinko commies and the loony left who claim they’re all the mouthpieces of transnational capitalist ideology. Your analysis is pretty good, but one part of it doesn’t hold:

I’d agree with Lew. The most populist media that I can think of are on talk-back radio. They don’t exactly appear to be ‘left’ to me. I’d usually describe them as just anti anyone who is not them, and leaning to maximum freedom for themselves and restrictions on everyone else.

Remind me of Act most of the time.

Awk. Just read HS’s comment. This agreeing just has to stop. I consider that it is all a subversive plot…. 🙂

It’s a bit of an irony to see some of the people who defended some of Labour’s urgency motions on measures that weren’t explicitly endorsed by the electorate. I generally think legislation should go through a proper select committee process, as it greatly improves the drafting of it.

There seem to be three issues here:

1. Whether the legislation should go ahead at some stage. National clearly signalled this before the election, and it was a theme that the unions and Labour campaigned against. The unions lost that campaign. It was hardly a secret agenda. National clearly has the mandate to proceed with the legislation–in fact it would be a broken promise if they didn’t. It seems to me that a lot of the debate is trying to relitigate the election result. The public debate has been held.

2. Whether the legislation should form part of this urgency package. I think National is on weaker ground here, since it wasn’t one of the 27 moves that National said would be part of its first 100 days. It was clearly going to be a policy priority for National but they could have done better by indicating it as a first-100 day issue some time before now.

3. Whether National could have made a better argument to make this an urgency item. I think they clearly could have, and it doesn’t seem to have been handled well in this respect. John Key has signalled that the economy is his major priority given the international and domestic financial issues. There’s a good argument that this measure could be part of National’s kick-start of the economy. That economic package hasn’t been announced yet, so it wasn’t exactly a coordinated announcement.

pk I’m part of the looney left (acording to Lews description) but I don’t say a lot, I read more than I type. Just wanna query that if the left of centre was populist wouldn’t we be in power??? or is it that the ordinary people number less than the right wingers (Greedy Rich Pricks)? lol

Actually, its tsmithfield, not “leftie”. Could someone have a look at this. Looks like my ID has been hacked.

Billy said: “Yes, but because there is no difference between a probationary and non-probationary period, it is utterly meaningless.”

I have to agree with this. I have had discussions with an employment lawyer on this issue. There is no difference between dismissal at the end of a 90 day trial period and dismissal at any other time. Exactly the same processes must be followed.
So, as the law stands, the probationary period is absolutely meaningless. In other words, it might as well not be there.

As a small business person, I would feel much more enthusiastic about hiring people if I could let them go easily if they do not work out. The current law increases my risks in employing new people, and therefore increases my reluctance to do so.

It is not necessarilly the case that work exists so a position must be filled. In many cases, there are several options; e.g. maintaining the status quo (often a safe option) or expanding and taking on staff. If the risk side of the equation is perceived as too high then many employers are likely to maintain the status quo to avoid the employment risks.

If the new law reduces the perceived risk to employers they are more likely to expand rather than maintain the status quo thus creating more jobs.

[lprent: Looks to me like you have cached cookie problems. IP is correct.

If you aren’t logged in, the the system ‘remembers’ who you are by a cookie stored on the client side. If the cookie stored matches one on the server, it puts in the data stored. This looks like it has happened before.

I’d suggest that you register and login because then it will pick up the data from the server based on your login, instead of off your local machine.

Otherwise you can change your details when you post a comment – just above the comment space.
I’ve fixed header]

I cant believe that there are people out there who really believe that main media are “left wing” Most of the daily papers are completly Right-Wing .. The most Tory biased paper in NZ must be the Herald . At the last election this Tory rag ran a consistant campaign agaist Labour . Not only was the regular editorials pro National and thus anti-Labour but Sensible Sentencing ,. Family First (all Right Wing groups ) full coverage for their anti Green
/Labour campaign.
Their regular columists like O’Sullivan and the raving neo-con Garth George used their columns proganding for the Nats .This tory rag also gave regular space to the Maxim Soc, and other anto Labour groups.
As for the talkback shows ,it seem to me as if all the fascists in Aotearoa dominate most of the talk back time. . The political left in NZ is completetly outnumbered by the power and wealth of the wealthy backers of National and ACT .
This is why blogs are a good source for theLeft to get their mesage across

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Allen, Researcher, UNSW Are we letting too many or too few migrants into Australia? For 2019-20 the Australian government has cut the annual net migrant intake from 190,000 to 160,000. It’s ...